(ABC NEWS)- A 24-year-old man accidentally shot by an FBI agent doing a backflip on the dance floor of a Colorado nightclub says he initially couldn’t believe he had been wounded while enjoying a night out with friends and thought “some idiot set off a firecracker.”
In an exclusive interview with ABC News’ “Good Morning America” set to be broadcast Thursday, Thomas Reddington said he remains “confused” by the bizarre incident that happened at the Mile High Spirits Tasting Room near downtown Denver around 12:45 a.m. Saturday.
“We sat down at one of those picnic tables — I heard a loud bang and I thought some idiot set off a firecracker,” Reddington told GMA. “Then I looked down at my leg and see some brown residue … I’m still thinking it’s a firework … all of a sudden from the knee down my leg became completely red. And that’s when it clicked in my head, ‘Oh, I’ve been shot.'”
Cell-phone video of the incident that has since gone viral on social media shows the FBI agent, identified by sources as 29-year-old Chase Bishop, dancing on a dance floor in the crowded bar when he suddenly did a backflip. Bishop fell forward, his gun slipped out of his waistband and landed on the dance floor.
When he went to pick up the weapon, it went off. A bullet hit Reddington in his outer left leg just below the knee and exited his inner leg, he said.
“I like stand up and like start walking in a little circle saying, ‘Hey, I think I’ve been shot. Can someone call 911?'” Reddington said.
He said he blacked out and either fell to the ground or sat on the ground. He said a good Samaritan used a belt to put a tourniquet on his bleeding leg.
“I blacked back in on the ground. Blacked back out. And then I woke up to a paramedic putting a tourniquet on my leg.”
He said he lost a lot of blood.
“I soaked through several blankets, several towels, a few gauze pads,” Reddington said.
The Denver Police Department is investigating the incident. Charges against the agent are pending the results of a blood-alcohol test.
